Calvin answers: What is an index anyway?

There have been many articles (Discussions, posts, whatever) on how Visual FoxPro gets its speed from and how the VFP index actually works.

Calvin's most recent post,
What is an index anyway?, goes into full detail.

As a quick note on indexing and VFP 9, VFP 9 includes a new Binary index, useful for handling logical indices. The new BINARY index is smaller and also much faster.

INDEX ON DELETED() TAG DELETED BINARY

Example: Table with 8000 records (a few deleted)
INDEX ON DELETED() TAG DELETED : CDX file size was about 22K

INDEX ON DELETED() TAG DELETED BINARY: CDX file was only 4 K

There used to be a time when almost every application created an index for DELETED() until Chris Probst (referenced here on ProFox - I would link to the entire article but FoxPro advisor never put it online - hey Chris! did you know you could revise it and put it online yourself?) shattered the illusion that it would make things faster.

As it notes in the VFP9 help file, this new BINARY tag can be very helpful on networks or WANs where the old approach could cause performance problems.

Comments

Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com

MS has just introduced their portal and it's pretty comprehensive. Nothing quite like learning that some people use AIM instead of MSN messenger, or that there really may be a need for supporting 4 monitors ( Cyrus Complains ) However, it's really a great sign that MS is serious about supporting the blogging community which seems to have um, exploded in size in the past year. Blogs and RSS come to Microsoft.com

FoxInCloud Stats

FoxInCloud sent this link a while back about their statistics regarding visits to their site: http://foxincloud.com/blog/2017/12/27/VFP-community-lessons-from-foxincloud-site.html What's interesting here is the breakdown of people. Yes, I think it's understandable that the Fox community is getting older. Another factor is the growth of the mobile and web environments taking over development. These environments really do push people towards the newer non-SQL or free SQL/hosted environments but more towards hosted storage options like Amazon and Google. A tool like FoxInCloud that helps MOVE existing applications to the cloud inherently competes with those environments. But FoxInCloud also allows developers to extend their application further by giving them a starting point using Javascript and the basic CSS (such as Bootstrap). If you're not rebuilding your application from scratch, it's certainly a great step forward. FoxPro VFP

Facebook Revolt - imeem alternatives?

When Scoble noted how Facebook under major revolt , I immediately thought of a site I found yesterday. The value offered by Facebook's feeds however do seem very cool - if only they had been smart and made them opt-in, instead of opt-out. I have been impressed though with Facebook's opening of their API's - they certainly get it that they need to open it up to developers. I haven't really explored this other site, beyond my first look. In some ways, I think the whole social networking site thing is just silly , but this site (imeem) definitely showed some value. I could find music (as posted by the artist), it worked in Firefox and it allowed people to rank, add to delicious and more. And when I'm looking at someone, I can see what they're up to (or rather what they allow us to see). Anyways, you may want to check it out.

Andrew MacNeill - AKSEL Solutions

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